


Keith

by Lanceeselhombre



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Baby Keith (Voltron), Blood, Character Death, Dads of Marmora (Voltron), Ever wondered how the blade gets new recruits?, Galra Family Dynamics, Gen, I’m not sure what to tag, Kits are reared like kittens in case you won’t like that, Male Lactation, Minor Character Death, No Gore, read and find out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 23:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14342799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lanceeselhombre/pseuds/Lanceeselhombre
Summary: Kolivan goes on a mission to search an abandoned Galra warship for survivors. He comes back with a kit to raise.





	Keith

Kolivan was silent as he slinked down the halls of the Galran ship, his Marmora blade tightly gripped in one hand, ready to be used at a moment’s notice. This outpost had been declared abandoned, empty, but he would not take chances. The reason he and his team were here was because they were expecting something or someone to still be alive on this ship. That thing could be a sentry or a druid. 

 

They had all split up to cover the large expanse of the vessel quicker, with each blade responsible for an entire floor. Their objective was simple: kill remaining Galran officers, rescue spies from the blade that were still alive, and save any kits they could. They went through this procedure with every seemingly abandoned war ship they came across, as they blew them up to prevent Zarkon’s forces from picking them up and using them further. Before they did that they always scoped the ship, to make sure they didn’t kill their own men, and to find possible new recruits for the blade in future decaphoebes. 

 

It might seem odd for a war group to be going around picking up babies, but abandoned kits were one of their main sources of new recruits. It wasn’t often that Galra turned against Zarkon’s empire and made it out alive. Kits were much more common to come across, and since every Galra under Zarkon’s reign was in the war, even nursing mothers would be on these vessels. Although, finding live kits was much more difficult, as the ones that were younger than a decaphoebe couldn’t survive more than a quintant without their mother’s attention, and any kit older was sent to an academy to become a soldier once they were weaned. They had to act quickly once they discovered empty ships to have the greatest chances of finding kits they could nurse back to health. 

 

Luckily, quick was the blade’s middle name. 

 

Kolivan came across no soldiers as he swept his part of the ship, though he could hear occasional, faint screams of the ones his teammates killed on the floors above and below him. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem as if there were any of the blade’s spies on this ship either. He made it through most of his sweep without finding anyone alive, and was preparing himself to return to the base empty handed. 

 

But then, as he turned down the last corridor, he heard it. Crying. 

 

His ears perked up at the sound, listening closely as he slowly made his way down the hall, listening at each door to find the room the sound was coming from. After a moment of searching he found that it was the fourth door on the left, and he cautiously reach out a hand to open the door, his blade poised and ready to strike as he threw the door open. 

 

No one came charging at him, and after a minute he lowered his blade, stepping into the room. 

 

It was a bedroom. A single female Galra was sprawled out across the floor, her yellow eyes lifeless and the majority of her purple coat stained red with her blood. There was a puddle of the liquid, dried and coagulated, underneath her, and a trail of blood from the door to her current location implied that she’d been attacked as she attempted to run into this room to save herself and her kit. (There was no blood outside the door, she had been attacked in the doorway of her bedroom.) 

 

On top of her still, stiff chest was a tiny kit, a shaking little clump of fur that was causing the ruckus Kolivan had heard. It wasn’t wearing any clothes- something normal for a baby of its size, there was no need when it would always be held close to its mother’s body- and its fur was dirtied with blood, causing it to clump and stick at odd angles. It didn’t appear to be hurt, however, the blood was from mom. 

 

Kolivan stepped closer and put his blade in its sheath, carefully crouching beside the corpse to get a better look at the kit. It was still thin, not much meat on its bones, meaning it was probably less than a phoeb old. Despite its age, it held onto its mother’s clothes tightly, not seeming to have tried crawling down its mother’s stomach to nurse from one of her teats. Little good it would have done them to try- they couldn’t get any milk through her bodysuit- but it was important knowledge to know they were too young to crawl. 

 

This was maybe the youngest kit he’d ever found alive, and in pretty decent condition. 

 

The blade gently gripped the kit by the scruff of their neck and pulled up with extreme caution, not wanting to break their little limbs- kits instinctually gripped onto whatever they could so strongly they would dislocate their shoulders and hips before they could be pried away. Kits also instinctually relaxed when they were scruffed, so this baby’s claws easily detached from their mother’s suit with a gentle tug. He lifted the kit away from its dead mother and held it in front of his face, quickly checking its gender. 

 

It was a boy.

 

Even with the touch from an adult to comfort him, the kit continued to wail, but Kolivan knew it was because he needed something other than comfort. He turned his wrist so the baby was facing away from him, then wrapped his free hand around its torso, his thumb around its back and his fingers around its front. Then, using the pad of his ring finger he gently rubbed the kit’s belly in downward strokes, making sure to get the area from his navel to his genitals. 

 

Seconds later pee sprayed from the baby’s prick, slowing to a dribble after a moment and then completely stopping. There hadn’t been much, but after being relieved the kit’s cries weren’t so loud. 

 

Once he was done stimulating the kit, Kolivan drew his hand away from their belly and grabbed the part of his suit over his chest, feeling for where the design dipped to a point at his sternum. He found it and pulled up at that point, causing the fabric to pull away from the rest of his suit, revealing a hidden pocket that was indicated by the dark gray portion of the suit on his stomach. He held the flap up with his chin while he opened the pouch-like space with his free hand, then carefully lowered the kit into it until their bottom and their weight rested against the bottom of the pocket. 

 

He let go of the kit’s scruff and they immediately clung to the thin layer of fabric over his belly, digging their claws in like they had with their mother. Kolivan felt bad for not, at the very least,  grooming the pee off the baby’s fur before he put him in the pouch, but they had to get out of the ship before the bomb was prepped and detonated, or they would be as dead as the kit’s mother. He would have plenty of time to clean and feed them once he got back to the pod, and they would survive the few minutes it would take him to get there. 

 

The blade let the flap on his suit fall back into place and stood, taking his blade back into one hand as the other went to carefully cradle the baby clinging to his belly. Wasting no time, he quickly left the room and ran down the corridors back to the pod, pressing his hand into the kit’s back to keep them from bouncing too much.

 

He again made no encounters as he made his way back to the recon point, running through the doors of the pod with a minute to spare before they would have closed. There were six other blades who had already returned from their floors, a few holding kits of their own and others empty handed. One more came running through the door a moment later, having found nothing, and they were all there. The pod closed and one of the unoccupied blades took the controls and began to pilot them back to the base. 

 

The kit that Kolivan had saved had yet to stop wailing, and now that he was safely back in the pod he sunk to the floor and pulled the baby out of his pouch, ready to give it the proper care it needed. 

 

First was feeding. One of the other blades had gotten him a tiny bottle with milk in it, one of several they always brought with them on these types of missions. One of the number one things rescued kits needed was milk, and while the males of their species could lactate- thankfully, otherwise these poor babies would be screwed on the base, where the gender ratio of male to female was nine to one- the blade’s sent on rescue missions couldn’t have another kit they were fostering. This rule kept blades from becoming overwhelmed with too many kits to take care of and prevented casualties due to sleep deprivation, but it also meant that all the Galra on these missions had dry milk supplies. So they carried these little bottles to feed the kits until their milk got flowing. 

 

Kolivan let the baby hang onto his belly while he carefully grabbed their little head with his pointer finger and thumb, holding it still long enough to offer the teat of the bottle in his other hand. The kit took it immediately and pulled hungrily, some of the milk spilling from their mouth and dripping down their chin and chest in their haste. While the Galra waited for him to finish his (messy) meal he rubbed his thumb up and down the baby’s back, comforting the tiny whines and whimpers they were still making even as they nursed. 

 

The kit’s distress was completely normal, and quite warranted, especially with how he’d been found. He was extremely young and small and cold (he was slightly warm, but kits were supposed to be hot little bodies- he was definitely too cold) and starved. Granted, it had probably only been vargas since his mother died, but to babies, especially ones as young as him, that was a long time to go without food or warmth. Not to mention that kits could discern the difference between their own mother and another Galra, and even though Kolivan was taking care of him, he could tell it wasn’t his mother and the milk he was drinking wasn’t his mother’s either. Kits became attached to mom very early, and her loss was a hard one. 

 

Within minutes, the bottle was empty, and Kolivan gently removed it from the kit’s searching mouth. He popped the teat off from the rest of the bottle and gave it back to him as a temporary dummy, meant to keep him satisfied until they were back at the base. 

 

As the Galra scruffed the kit again and laid him on his back on his other hand, he noticed that the baby was much more calm and content now, practically pliant under his touch. He looked as if he was seconds away from a milk coma, which a good thing. While the baby was drifting, Kolivan began to groom him, starting with his genitals and the pee he’d neglected to clean off of him earlier. Then he slowly made his way around the rest of his little body, gently working out the knots and clumps in his fur with the barbs on his tongue, his saliva washing away the blood coating the baby. 

 

After about twenty dobashes of grooming the kit was clean and his fur was shining like it should. By that time he was asleep as well, contently sprawled out over Kolivan’s palm starfish style, his head lulling to the side. 

 

The Galra let his kit cling to his chest while he slept, not wanting to put him back in the pouch or on his belly. (Both places probably had bits of coagulated blood and drops of pee on them, and he didn’t want to ruin his fresh grooming job.) The kit was taken care of, for now, and his job was done until the pod returned to the base. 

 

Kolivan took the opportunity to rest, knowing he would need it. Now that he had a kit to foster, rest and sleep would become two things of great value to him. Kits needed attention every few hours, and once they got old enough to do more than sleep and eat they needed a constant watchguard. 

 

He needed to get some sleep while he could. 

 

*****

 

Hours later the pod returned to the marmora base, and one of the other blades shook Kolivan awake. He roused immediately and got to his feet, leaving the pod and heading for his bedroom. He had duties to attend to after being away from the base for a quintant, but his new charge came first. Bases wouldn’t collapse without constant attention to detail, but kits would die. 

 

Thankfully, his kit was still sleeping, though tiny, high-pitched whines occasionally came from him, the kit’s way of saying he needed to be stimulated again. He knew he was also due for another feed, which he would be able to take care of this time by himself; listening to the kit’s cries in the pod had been more than enough to get his instincts churning and his body lactating. He should have enough milk by now.

 

He entered his bedroom and sat down on the bed, then scruffed his kit and laid him on the palm of his other hand. This time, as he stimulated the baby he used his tongue, grooming up the resulting mess at the same time and killing two birds with one stone. Once Kolivan had finished the task the kit was quite again, no longer in immediate need of something. 

 

Still holding onto the baby’s scruff, Kolivan rummaged through the drawers of the bureau next to his bed until he found a small felt blanket. He laid the blanket across his lap, folding it once widthwise and rolling it up before he gently held it against the kit’s front. He let go of the kit’s scruff and he clung to the warm fabric, wrapping his little arms and legs around the rolled up blanket and holding on like it was his parent. The Galra grabbed a second blanket from the same drawer and wrapped it around the baby and the roll he was hanging onto, creating a soft, warm cocoon for him to sleep in while his guardian roamed around the room. 

 

Kolivan gently laid the bundle down in the middle of his bed and covered it with his comforter, blocking out the lights of the room so the kit wouldn’t be disturbed. Then, once he was satisfied with the temporary ‘nest’ he’d left the kit in, he peeled himself out of his bodysuit and walked into the en suite bathroom connected to his room to take a shower. He hadn’t gotten very dirty on the mission- he hadn’t even been sweating- but he wanted to make sure he was clean before he let the kit touch his fur and nurse. Kits had fragile health, hell if he jeopardized his charge’s life over a shower. 

 

He quickly washed his whole body, taking extra care when cleaning his chest and stomach, then stepped out of the shower. He dried himself off as best he could with a towel before he walked back into his bedroom and put on a pair of pants. He skipped putting on a shirt, since he wouldn’t be leaving his room for a while and it would only get in the way of the kit nursing. 

 

He moved back to his bed and drew back the covers, gently unraveling the blanket he’d wrapped around the kit and detaching him from the roll, gently pulling the dummy from his mouth. He put the two small blankets and the dummy in his bureau drawer and laid down on his back, sitting the kit down on his chest so he would really examine him. Before he’d checked the important things- the kit’s strength, his age, his overall condition- and now he had to check the smaller things. Was his fur thinning in some places, or was it in a state of rain rot*? Were his eyes caked with grit or were they clean? Were his ears clean? Was his nose dry? Was the underside of his tail clean? (This particular kit didn’t have a tail, but the same rule applied.) 

 

Kolivan was pleased to find that the kit was in very good health. His mother had taken good care of him. 

 

Done with the examination, the Galra laid the baby down on his chest and let go of his scruff, allowing him to cling. He gently scratched the kit’s cheek with one of his claws until he roused with a wide yawn. For the first time, the kit opened his eyes, and Kolivan was shocked to see purple irises and whites eyes squint up at him. 

 

He was a hybrid. 

 

Kolivan wondered what his father’s species was. He certainly didn’t remember meeting any species with purple eyes, or ones that made hybrids with so many Galra instincts still intact.

 

The kit began to whimper, so he put the thought away for later. He turned him around so he was facing his stomach, laying him down again just out of reach of one of his teats. He wanted to see if he could manage to crawl the short distance, or if he was truly too young or weak to move. The kit only whimpered for a moment, able to smell the milk just a few centimeters away, but not moving towards it. After a minute Kolivan went to move him closer so he could reach, thinking he wasn’t going to be able to himself, but stopped when he felt a tiny movement. It was painstakingly slow, but the kit was crawling on his belly, managing to pull himself close enough to latch onto the teat and begin to nurse. 

 

Kolivan watched him nurse intently, gently moving him to a different teat when the first one ran dry and monitoring how his belly bulged with the milk to make sure he didn’t overeat. After he’d depleted the milk in two of the adult’s teats, the Galra decided he’d had enough and pulled him away. The kit still wanted to nurse, however, and sucked on some of the man’s fur when he couldn’t find another nipple. Kolivan let him, seeing no harm in it and figuring the kit could use the comfort. Once the baby was back in perfect health, he’d be allowed to nurse consistently, but Kolivan didn’t want to let him so early after his rescue. Kits were known for nursing themselves sick after being deprived of milk for more than a couple of hours. 

 

With a silent sigh the blade sat up and got out of his bed. Now that the kit was taken care of again, he should get to his duties before they piled up. He grabbed a loose shirt from his closet and slipped it on, covering the baby still attached to his chest. It was about time he had another nap, the darkness and warmth radiating off of his new caregiver would lull him in minutes, assuming he wasn’t already asleep. 

 

*****

 

It took three quintants for the kit to regain the strength he lost. It turned out that the baby could actually crawl around pretty decently, once he was warmed up and fed. He was also quite talkative, quick to squeak happily at affection and quick to alert his caregiver to his needs. 

 

It took a little longer for the kit to take a liking to Kolivan. The baby constantly sought attention from him, but that wasn’t that same as him liking the man. He did that because he needed to be taken care of, and a kit would accept care from anyone willing. Bonding was always much harder, as kits grieved for their mother long after she was gone and were slow to accept new parental figures. This particular kit had taken the separation extremely hard. He hadn’t shown it for the first day, but after two days he started to cry often, wanting his mom. 

 

It took him a movement to realize mom wasn’t coming back. Shortly after he began to see Kolivan as a new ‘mom,’ started associating him with the things a kit should: food, warmth, safety, and comfort. 

 

Kolivan knew he’d accepted him when he started playing. Kits only played when they felt safe and happy, usually with their caregiver. And the first day that his kit woke up from a nap and crawled up his chest to paw his nose he felt a goey warmth settle in his chest. There was no feeling like earning the trust of a young kit. 

 

It was then, after the kit’s true personality started shining, that Kolivan set out to find the baby a name. He wanted to give him a name in an alien language, to honor his father’s unknown species. The kit was playful and gentle but strong, needy but not insistent. He was more of a ‘mama’s boy’ than most other kits Kolivan had met. He seemed to be growing slower than the other kits, but he was just as smart, if not smarter.

 

The blade spent movements deciding on a name. During a trip to the space mall he stumbled across a mostly forgotten store that sold things from an alien planet: Earth. It was there that he found a name that seemed to fit his kit perfectly, the owner of the store had helped him pick it out by listing common boys’ names from the planet. 

 

His name was going to be Keith. 

**Author's Note:**

> Rain rot is a condition where the skin and fur of an animal begin to rot from extended exposure to moisture. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing.


End file.
